John Du Cane

Spark Your Day

Choosing Friends

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“Friends show their love in times of trouble, not in happiness.”—Euripides

How many really good friends do we have—of either gender—that we feel we could count on in a pinch, a bind or something far, far worse? Who would have our back and who would be happy to throw us under the bus when the chips started to fly? For good reason, in all cultures, strong friendship is revered—because when it comes down to it, abiding friendship and loyalty can be all too rare.

Friendship

We are speaking here of unconditional friendship—the kind of friendship that transcends the need for ego-strokes, superficial niceties and thin-iced acts of kindness.

Friendships were won or lost on the battlefield of our addiction. Usually lost. After extended periods of chemical abuse, we’d be lucky to be able to count to three fingers when listing those who we retained as true friends. Because—while the true test of deep friendship is to hang in there whatever the shenanigans being perpetrated—we can all handle only so much disappointment and inflicted pain.

In recovery, we learned to distinguish better between our true and our false friends. Between safe friendships and risky friendships. We had to become more positively discriminating in whom we chose to be our friends and whom we needed to cut loose. To still hang with some of our former using buddies could be the equivalent of hanging out in bars. Why play Russian roulette with our sobriety for the sake of some nostalgic—or vicarious—entertainment? Better the brief pain of staying away to the extended pain of a relapse…

Let’s take a moment today then, to look at the state of our current friendships. Who can we count on and feel blessed to have in our lives? Could there be anyone who our gut is warning us to stay away from, despite certain attractions to do otherwise?

Friendship reveals itself in action, but it resides in the heart. So, with the intention to boost our capability for deep friendship, let’s exercise our heart-love muscle with just our breath and our attention:

Sit or lie comfortably. Inhale slowly and put your attention in your heart area. Exhale and reinforce the heart further with your attention. Pause your breath a few moments and feel the glow of your heart. Do a total of twenty to thirty cycles until you feel gently complete.

I breathe into my heart, I listen to its beat, I attend to its beauty and I strengthen its capacity to love others through abiding friendship.

Mood Swings

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“And people are moody, dude. You gotta get used to living with people.”—John Green

Moods, by their nature, ebb like the tides. But those tides can vary enormously from just a slight shift to an overwhelming surge. Throw in a distant earthquake, a hurricane or some other disturbance and the tide can become a tsunami. And devastation can follow in its wake.

Moods, tides

Chemical dependence exacerbated our mood swings. Our addiction pitched a dizzying array of curve balls, fast balls and sliders at us, with scant regard for our mental health—let alone the well-being of others. Depending on the chemical, we could blaze up into angry tirades, withdraw into sullen silences, sink into depression and despair—or pivot into exuberant displays of manic joy. And the deeper and longer we progressed in our disease the more dramatic the swings…

In recovery, we take care to set up early warning systems to alert us to potential mood swings. However, the triggers can be so sudden sometimes, that we need to have the built-in resilience to surf those surges without being dragged down and possibly drowned.

We can’t afford to be lulled into a false sense of security when it comes to moodiness. There’s just too much volatility and unpredictability within ourselves and others. The best defense is to build our spiritual strength and work on our inner balance. For moodiness specializes in the surprise attack. It can be on us before we have the extra breath to cry for help… Staying closely connected to our support group can be a tremendous help in building up those spiritual reserves.

Today, let’s look back at a recent mood swing—either our own or someone else’s—and how we handled the challenge of that swing. Did we take the shift too personally? Were we resentful, afraid, dispirited, offended? It helps at this point to remind ourselves that by their nature these moods are very temporary. Let’s hold steady in our spirits and smile away our worries…

Speaking of our inner smile—let’s use that as a wonderfully effective method to wash away the debris on the beach of our being:

Sit or lie in a comfortable position. Close your eyes. Good. Now, put a light smile on your face. Feel your cheeks raise up in response to that smile. Inhale and bring your attention to the top of your head. As you exhale, let your smile wash down through your whole body until the smile reaches your toes. Feel the smile permeating every cell in your body. And feel every cell smile back at you—as your kind attention bathes them in relaxing relief. Pause for a moment and feel the calmness spreading through your being. You may feel your smile broadening in a natural way from all the pleasant sensations you’ve released within yourself… Repeat for another nine cycles, or until you feel complete.

I smile as I watch my worries wash away into the ocean of acceptance.

The Perils of the Impulse

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“Before you make a decision, ask yourself this question: will you regret the results or rejoice in them.”—Rob Liano

How would our traffic work, if all three choices were always only Green? Never Red. Never Yellow. No stop. No slow down. Just go, go, go all the time? The answer of course, is all kinds of pile-ups. Fender-benders if we are fortunate, but horrendous meat-grinders at the other end of the spectrum. Mutilation, disfigurement, disablement, limbs torn off, young and old—their lives shattered forever from one reckless decision.

ImpulseAnd yet, only too often in our using days, that was our MO: blistering through the Green and to heck with those silly Yellows and Reds! Those were for the wimps, the straights, the buttoned-up types who were too scared to live life to the max.

Unfortunately, our lack of impulse-control often hurt not only ourselves but had devastating consequences for others. We were accidents waiting to happen. Human wrecking balls. Bad for us—doubly bad for the poor unfortunates who crossed our paths…

When we entered recovery, we suffered much regret and remorse, remembering the consequences of our impulsivity. We came to understand that the impulse for fulfillment—while crucial for our will to live—is an immensely powerful and easily mismanaged force.  We, in particular—with our addictive propensity to shoot before we aim—need help regulating our urges.

Our journey in recovery is hence all about caution and safety. On a daily basis, we are released from the perils of chemical consumption. We are careful to release ourselves simultaneously from the perils of impulses run riot. Moderation may appear boring to us initially, however the more moderately we take our moments, the deeper those moments become. Richness happens when we pause to feel it…

Today, let’s reflect for a moment on an urge, an impulse that may be presenting a challenge for us. Will giving in to that urge result in joy or regret? It’s good to remind ourselves that just because we have the impulse, it doesn’t mean we have to act on it. Because, that impulse may not have our final best interests at heart.

Here’s a method we can do now to help release the tension from a needy impulse. We are using the paradoxical notion: to release tension, begin by intensifying the tension. Our method uses a wonderful exercise called the HardStyle Plank:

Kneel on the floor. Then bend your torso forward, placing your hands and forearms on the floor. Make fists. Rotate your fists so they face in toward each other. Scoot your feet back all the way and raise your whole body into a line parallel with the floor.

Tighten your fists as much as you can. Now tighten your abs as hard as possible. Now your butt muscles. Tighten your thighs. Be as tight and as tense as you can manage. Hold this tension-laden position from thirty to sixty seconds, breathing lightly through your nose. If you notice you have relaxed a certain muscle group, show them no mercy and insist they tighten themselves back up!

When your HardStyle Plank becomes more than you can continue to be friendly with, relax and come out of the position. Hopefully, if we ask you now about “that impulse” you will answer “what impulse?” The HardStyle Plank is a fabulous strengthener for your whole body and in particular your core. Plus it doubles as this wonderful impulse-releaser.

I enjoy the calmness that comes upon me, as I choose not to rush in to that beckoning alley.

What Will Be Our Legacy?

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“Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you.”—Shannon L. Alder

When others talk about us—now and in the future—what would they say? And what would we hope they’d say?  What would they say about our character, our deeds, our impact on their lives? What about us would have left a mark—and in what form?

These are questions we mostly used to shy from, in the days of our addiction. We knew all too well that our character was cracked and flawed, our deeds so suspect, our impact mostly hurtful and destructive. Our lives had become unmanageable—and that unmanageability was like a poison seeping into the groundwater, tainting all it touched.

Let’s face it, we could barely bear to face the harm we wrought on the world. We hid from our own selves and formed a kind of delusional casing around ourselves. We made stuff up and threw it into the air to distract and hopefully dazzle away the curious. We were ashamed of ourselves but scared to change. Whatever public contributions we had made seemed to pall against the ignominy of our inner lives.

As we straightened ourselves out and started to rebuild our shattered lives, we dared to dream that we too could still have a legacy to leave our world. That our presence on this planet had not, after all, been a vain exercise in wonton self-centeredness. That we could still be remarked on and remembered for having brought beauty, grace and love into the hearts of others. Perhaps we could—yes—even be admired and respected for our reborn hearts and resurrected character. Something of us wonderful could live on beyond and after us…

Legacy

So, today, let’s contemplate the legacy we are leaving to the world. What more can we do to burnish its gold? What unfinished act could we now complete, to the betterment of all? Sometimes it can be tiredness—a kind of world-weariness—that holds us back from such acts of completion. We were so close but never quite crossed the finishing line. What—perhaps small—thing can we complete today?

Need an energy boost to get moving on the task before you? Nothing ever beats the good old full bodyweight squat to get your heart pumping and putting a blaze in your eyes:

Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart. Cross your arms over your chest and squat down as low as you can, preferably below parallel and eventually with your thighs touching your calves. Keep your knees from bowing in by aligning them with your feet. Keep your back as straight as possible. Come back up and lock out your legs and hips completely. Squeeze the muscles in your legs as tightly as possible for a second, relax and repeat the squat. Inhale and hold the breath as you descend. Exhale as you ascend. Do twenty repetitions—or as close to twenty repetitions as you can manage while maintaining good form.

I am grateful to contribute the legacy of my self to the world.

Let’s Join The Crew

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“All is connected… no one thing can change by itself.”—Paul Hawken

When we embarked on recovery, we set sail with trusted companions in a large sturdy boat. We’d paddled our canoe solo against the flow for way too long. We were tired of slipping back—of frantic stroking, with just some churned foam to show for it. In fact, we finally ended up with the paddle ripped from our bleeding hands—the boom of the approaching rapids growing louder by the minute…

Really, we have been the fortunate ones, somehow rescued into recovery by the love of others. And we can congratulate ourselves on having taken advantage of that good fortune by accepting the rescue, making the connections and joining the crew.

Join the Crew

Now we can plunge forward together through the waves of change. We can navigate the inevitable storms, the riptides, the reefs and—yes, also—the doldrums with the courage that comes from companionship. We realized we don’t have to be alone to face our addiction and our tribulations anymore. We can do this thing together—and are stronger for it.

Let’s take a moment today to reflect on all those who cared enough for us in our darkest days—and who helped us toward the salvation of recovery. We know that without our fellow “crew members” we would have continued to chart a destructive—if not terminal—passage through those troubled waters… We can best thank them, can we not, by staying connected, staying part of the team.

Now, let’s give some juice to that overworked fellow who connects our head to our body—the neck. There’s a ton of joints in our neck area that are often starved of healing synovial fluids, because of our tension and rigidity. Bring on those fluids!

The magic juice-stimulator—and it happens in a jiffy—is joint rotation. We agreed to be a crew member, so nodding our heads up and down in agreement seems appropriate: without moving your shoulders, incline your head up and back as far as it will go without discomfort. Now bring your chin to your chest as best you can. Repeat for a total of ten repetitions.

It can be disconcerting to discover how little range of motion we might have in our neck movements—particularly when we turn our head from side to side. Do ten repetitions of that movement also. See what we mean? That’s from too much tension. Frankly, we really can’t move our neck too much. It wouldn’t hurt at all to include neck rotations in your hygiene practice on a daily basis. But for now, we’ll stick with these two movements…

I appreciate those who connected with me and who invited me to join them in the journey of recovery.